"Demographic parameters and population dynamics of the Adelie penguin
population at Edmonson Point, Victoria Land, Antarctica"
Dr. Tosca Ballerini
CCPO
Monday, March 23, 2009
3:30 PM
Room 3200, Research Innovations Building I
Abstract
Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) are one of the most abundant
predators in the Southern Ocean and they are considered good indicators of
food availability and sea-ice typology changes. In 1994 the Italian
Antarctic Research Program started a long-term monitoring program of the
Adelie penguin population breeding at Edmonson Point, Central Ross Sea.
Individual based data on presence-absence at the colony and data on
breeding success were collected between 1994 and 2004. These data were
used to develop mark-recapture and generalized linear models to study
interannual variations in survival rates and breeding success. The
demographic parameters, estimated both in relation to individual
characteristics and to environmental variables, were then used as input to
a structured population model for the Adelie penguin. The demographic
model was used to calculate the sensitivity of the population growth rate
to changes in demographic parameters and to predict population
trajectories under different scenarios of winter sea ice extent in the
Ross Sea.
Biography
Tosca Ballerini received a M.S. degree in Natural Sciences at the University
of Florence and a Ph.D. in Polar Biology at the University of Siena in
Italy. For her Ph.D. research, she developed demographic models to describe
the popoluation dynamics of the Adelie penguin population of Edmonson Point,
in the central Ross Sea, Antarctica. In November 2008 she began a
postdoctoral research position at the Center for Coastal Physical
Oceanography with Prof. Eileen Hofmann. Dr. Ballerini is participating in a
food web comparison project that is part of the U.S. GLOBEC synthesis
program. She is currently building mathematical models for Southern Ocean
food webs.
Reception before seminar at 3:00 PM
Research Innovations Building I
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23529
757-683-5548
Last updated 03/06/2009.
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